Write Your Thoughts

Journaling can be serious business but it can also be fun and rewarding. When we think of good memories we get a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. Our journals provide us with a way to relive the pleasure of these memories. We can reminiscence about the good old days and write down these recollections.

Apart from manipulating these recollections for our maximum gratification, mental recollections can be beneficial for practical purposes. It may be necessary to get relevant information from our memories that can help us to explain present day events. Or the recollections may be useful in helping us to come to terms with something that happened in the past so that we can move forward in the present. Even happy memories can hold very profound truths.

Pleasant memories lay in all the corners of our minds just waiting to tumble out. If we allow them to, we can experience all sorts of happiness and the beauty of a journal is that the memories can be relived over and over again. Not only are we reliving the memories as we write them down but we can relive them by rereading what we have written.

At times when we don’t feel on top of the world, we have memories to draw on and make us feel better.

Remember there is nothing like words in black and white to help you see where you are and where you are going.

One of the great benefits of journaling is that we can write anything we want and there will be no biting criticism, no sermon from the pulpit, no disagreement, and no veering the conversation away from what we want to talk about. What could be more freeing than this lack of discord? The only confrontation that takes place is with us. Sometimes we have enough conflict within ourselves without getting more stress from others.

In a sense, our journals have some of the qualities of a best friend. That’s someone who listens attentively and can help us to see things in an objective light somewhat like a journalist who can give both sides of the story without bias. Disapproval and sermonizing can only lead to inhibitions about what we really want to say. Of course, this is not what we want. Fortunately, reticence about our feelings and thoughts do not come into journal writing.

When we write our thoughts down on paper without fear of judgment, we can truly analyze our thoughts and speak our truths. And this is the whole point of recording the accounts of our lives. With this knowledge, why not have a stress free dialogue with your journal?

Remember there is nothing like words in black and white to help you see where you are and where you are going.

About

Sheryl A. Keen is the author of “Journal According to John.” Her novel is about John, a twenty-eight-year-old man, who follows a close friend’s advice and begins keeping a journal. He’s recently divorced from his wife, Debbie, and he hopes the journal will provide a tool with which to make some sense of his brief, failed marriage and to determine why he is so emotionally challenged. Will John discover the reasons for his dysfunctional situation? Can keeping the journal help him improve his life?

Sheryl writes both poetry and prose. She also enjoys painting. For more information about Sheryl’s writing, visit her website at http://www.sherylkeen.com